In an electrical communication bus in which a memory controller is coupled with a memory device such as a GDDR3 DRAM memory, the DRAMs are designed to train their drive impedance and termination values against a reference resistor. However, process variations and resolution may cause variations in the final DRAM training values. The variations may occur within a memory controller coupled to the DRAM if it trains in a similar manner, thereby causing a mismatch in DRAM and controller impedances.
The mismatch may cause timing offsets due to reference voltages not being properly aligned to the resulting data eye. The problem occurs specifically in a GDDR3 interface from a memory controller to a GDDR3 memory device. However, the problem also occurs in a number of other system and sub-system electrical communication buses, resulting in reduced timing margins in other situations.
For the above reasons, what is needed is an arrangement that couples a memory device and its memory controller during memory driver training. This arrangement may reduce mismatches by coupling the components on a shared electrical bus through impedance adjustment of the termination impedance in a memory device during training of the memory device. This may reduce or eliminate known offset issues.